


Heaven In A Wild Flower

by entanglednow



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale's True Form (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley's True Form (Good Omens), First Kiss, First Time, Gardens & Gardening, Intimacy, M/M, Metaphysical Sex, Picnics, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:28:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28132431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley finally get to have their picnic, which leads to an unexpected offer of intimacy.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 98
Kudos: 343
Collections: "O Lord Heal This Gift Exchange 2020" [OLHTS discord server]





	Heaven In A Wild Flower

**Author's Note:**

  * For [green_grin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/green_grin/gifts).



> Written for the lovely Grin, for the Oh Lord Heal This Server gift exchange. I always have fun writing true form stuff for these two, so I hope that you like it :D

After Crowley had pruned, mulched, aggressively forked, staked all the new saplings and removed the remaining weeds with extreme prejudice, he considers the garden well subdued. Aziraphale can finally lay out his blanket on their very well-behaved lawn. The folded material is red and white because the angel can't seem to resist the lure of the traditional. It also smells like it was made five minutes ago, still faintly sharp with ozone.

There's white wine, devilled eggs, pate, ham and several cheeses, fresh bread, olives, cheese scones, stuffed peppers -

"Did you miracle this basket bigger?" Crowley tries to get a look inside, only to be expertly thwarted by Aziraphale filling his arms with a bottle of wine and two glasses.

"I did have some trouble fitting in the scones." The angel is still pulling things out, still setting it on plates, and Crowley resists the urge to tease him further because his smile is joyful and he hates the thought of doing a single thing to ruin it.

The weather seems to have had the same thought. It stays sunny, but with just enough of a breeze to be pleasant, and though large clouds drift ponderously overhead they have the decency to not drop a single spot of rain. Crowley isn't sure if Aziraphale is guilty of giving the sky a helpful nudge in the not-raining direction. He's not going to call him on it though, not after the way the angel had suggested a garden picnic this morning with such enthusiasm. He'd swayed just a touch as he waited for a reply, ready to encourage, or cajole, or perhaps even deploy the rarely used weapon of a 'please.' As if there was even a chance that Crowley would have said no.

He's distracted for a while watching the angel make his way through carefully chosen platefuls of delicacies, making delighted noises over the cheeses and hums of enjoyment around tiny cream-filled cakes. While Crowley occasionally refills his glass and passes him things without having to be asked. He listens to Aziraphale talk at length about his enthusiastic progress on acquiring a hobby, several hobbies if necessary, and they end up re-having the argument about whether knowing how to play the piano is the same as having learned it. Crowley has never been able to resist just a bit of conversational poking, so the angel's wearing that scandalised look, with the pout that he's come to think of as entirely his and no one else's.

If Crowley was inclined to use the word for anything without a wealth of sarcasm behind it, he might have said today was perfect.

Until Aziraphale reaches out and steadies his hand the next time he leans to pour more wine - in a way he's never done before. The gesture is so small, but it's nothing they would have dreamed of allowing themselves to do a year ago. The casual intimacy of it, the familiarity, it's a pointed reminder that it no longer matters what they are, or who might be watching. It's enough for Crowley to transfer the wine bottle to his other hand and set it down, then slowly draw his sunglasses free and tuck them inside his jacket.

Aziraphale's smile widens, and there's a warm, indulgent squeeze of his fingers, then another, as if he can't help it now he's free to take Crowley's hand in his own.

"Careful, any harder and we'll be occupying the same space at the same time." Crowley expects the angel to laugh as well, or to mock chastise him for the suggestive nature and tone of his comment.

But Aziraphale does neither.

"We could, if you wanted to?" he says instead, and the end of the sentence hangs briefly, as if he's not sure whether to make it a question or simply a statement.

Crowley can feel the surprised lift of his own eyebrows, the full glass he's holding left hovering in mid-air, and for a moment he thinks he can't possibly have heard that right, Aziraphale can't be suggesting -

"Angel?"

"If that was something you wanted," Aziraphale says carefully, like he's testing the words for himself as well. "We've already proven that our essences touching won't harm each other. I felt you slide past me when we - well." They still don't say that out loud, just in case. But the reminder, soft and almost teasing, of the moment when they'd truly touched for the first time, leaves him strangely warm inside. The thought of repeating it, of not just daring to touch but _reaching_ for each other.

"I remember -" Crowley stops, because he doesn't talk about his existence before the Fall, he never talks about before. But he thinks this time - he thinks for this moment it might be necessary. "I also remember that it was a bit scandalous to discuss, even when I was up there. That it wasn't the sort of thing you did unless -" He can't find the words for it.

"No," Aziraphale agrees hurriedly. "Not unless you were...close. Very close." There's a splash of colour on each cheek and his eyes are bright with amusement, but also nerves. Crowley thinks the angel might be the most nervous he's ever seen him. Which isn't entirely surprising. He's talking about - he's talking about mingling with Crowley over crackers and pate.

"We haven't even kissed," he finds himself saying. Which would probably sound stupid to anyone who hadn't been here as long as they had. What Aziraphale is suggesting, after six thousand years among humans, Crowley feels like it's the sort of thing that should come after a kiss.

"Oh, I suppose -" Aziraphale blinks. "Would you like to?" There's a soft curiosity to the question, but also something intrigued and a little daring. Though whether he's daring himself or Crowley isn't entirely clear.

It takes Crowley a moment to put together a reply. Because he'd prepared for a picnic today, for an afternoon spent lazing in the sun with his angel, enjoying the spread of trees overhead and the well-behaved and slightly terrified garden. He hadn't expected - he hadn't expected anyone to bring up the possibility of combining on an atomic level. It's been centuries since Crowley even properly slipped out of his body.

"You're just going to ask me that out of nowhere?" He can't help the surprise, it's not like the angel to be so bold. It's not like either of them to be so bold.

"I don't think it's quite out of nowhere." Aziraphale almost sounds cross now, but Crowley knows him well enough to understand how afraid he is, and how brave he's being. "We do live together now."

Which is the truth, it had seemed so natural to let gravity pull them together, now they didn't have to hide how much they enjoyed each other's company. But Crowley can't manage a single coherent word in reply to it actually being spoken out loud. They all stick in his throat, roll there uncomfortably. For long enough that Aziraphale's hand goes soft against his, starts to fall away.

"Hey, no, no." Crowley tightens his grip, refuses to let the angel slip free. "Give me a minute to take this in, would you? I'm not the one who asked if I want to combine on a quantum level in our garden."

Aziraphale blusters for a moment, as if to chastise Crowley for being so crude out loud. Only to suddenly realise that was exactly what he'd suggested. He lets out a nervous laugh and drains an entire glass of wine.

"I think it's the wine," he says hurriedly.

"You've had three glasses." Crowley can't resist the smile.

"Leave me my excuses, you villain," Aziraphale complains and Crowley can't help but laugh, fingers squeezing his again, before gently releasing them.

Crowley vanishes his own wine. "Have you ever done it with anyone before?" he asks.

Aziraphale shakes his head. "No - no, I haven't. Have you?"

"No," Crowley admits. Though he might have thought about it a time or two, or three. Of sliding in, around and through Aziraphale, finding the same frequency, becoming the same vast wavelength until every part of Aziraphale was also part of him, ringing and vibrating fast enough to scorch the air - and he's suddenly very glad he no longer has anything to hold that would betray the slight shake in his hand. "Not with anyone else."

_He would never with anyone else._

"I've heard it can be very - very overwhelming." Aziraphale sounds nervous, fingers twisting on the stem of his glass, which he hasn't bothered to refill. "Especially the first time."

"Yeah, I've heard the same," Crowley agrees, and he's suddenly aware of how much of him Aziraphale would see like that. Of how honest he would have to be. Stripped free of his masks and his affectations, all the way down to his raw insides. The angel would see the very core of him, emptied of grace and shored up with spite and fury and as many clever schemes and plots and loopholes as he could stuff in there. The cracked edges of what used to be a halo, and the way that even underneath the material skin he was something cold and shifting and serpentine. Deeper still, the hidden pieces, scorched at the edges, soft and frail, rarely acknowledged and well-protected.

It should be terrifying - no, it is terrifying. But a larger part of him, the part of him that had brushed against the angel, had felt that ring of like-to-almost-like, wanted to show Aziraphale everything he was, every splintered piece. He wanted to offer it all up to him. He wanted to mingle their essences, let light spill into dark and make something new, something that was the both of them combined. He wanted to say 'here - here are the pieces of me, and anything that would make you stronger, anything that would make you feel safe, it belongs to you, take it.'

He wants it with such a furious longing that he doesn't have the words.

"This is a bit different than slipping past each other to switch corporations, angel," he says instead - stalling, though for which one of them he doesn't know. "You're talking about braiding our essences together." Crowley is amazed that he manages to voice that out loud. It's one of the few things they've never talked about through the ages. Intimacy had always been a topic best left alone - angelic intimacy would have been scandalous for an angel and a demon to even consider. "We don't know for certain that we're, y'know, properly compatible."

Aziraphale fixes him with a very familiar look, colour high on his cheeks, refusing to look away. Crowley hasn't seen him blush like this since the seventeenth century. That one hadn't been his fault, not directly. This one - this one he thinks might be his fault. If Aziraphale is thinking the same thing as him.

"Crowley, I don't think there's a single part of you that I would find anything other than absolutely necessary."

Crowley swallows hard at the confession. How is he supposed to find anything to say to that? Instead he lets himself be brave, or reckless - or in love - he lifts his hand, his long cold fingers held spread apart in offering. There's still the slightest tremble to them - but when Aziraphale clumsily sets his wine down and lifts his hand as well, it's as unsteady as his own.

"There's no one else I've ever wanted to do this with, no one but you," Aziraphale says firmly, and he reaches out and presses their fingers together, a touch of warm skin that hums with ethereal energy.

The angel beneath the corporation is no longer tucked neatly away, already stretching tentatively towards him, spreading gently open. Crowley realises that Aziraphale is the one who's taken the first step this time. Which is something of a surprise - or perhaps it isn't? He had, after all, been the one to reach out on the bus, to nudge their fingers together for the first time and hold on while the smell of soot and burnt paper still clung to him, Crowley's heart beating hard enough to crack his ribs. The sheer impossibility of a love returned, confessed, and finally free to be shared. He'd thought that was the end of them both, and for a moment it hadn't mattered.

Crowley remembers how that had felt - and that's the first thought he offers.

The breeze in the garden stops moving the leaves, the insects hovering in flight, their wings rising and falling in slow and sleepy waves as Crowley starts to process information and sensation too fast for the world to keep up. The light from the sun breaks into thousands of colours as he twists inside his corporation, unlocking and unwinding and gently reaching back for the angel.

The moment they finally touch, Crowley leaves his corporation behind.

Aziraphale is searing and beautiful underneath, all his wings spreading open, vast and burning with ethereal flame. The roaring, pounding chorus of every feather moving is a sensation he's not prepared for, the whole unravelling mass of him suddenly vibrating under the force of it. He spirals closer, feels the angel's gravitational pull. Crowley has always known it existed, but here - fleshless and naked with him - he doubts he could fight it if he tried. It tugs at the cold centre of him, and somehow it's both a terrifying, unstoppable force and the gentlest offer of unity Crowley has ever felt.

It is all so very _Aziraphale_.

He might have resisted before, instinctively, curling into a wound, shielding where he was raw and exposed. It was so dangerous to want things, more dangerous to want them this hard. But he can feel how much Aziraphale wants this too, how much the angel wants _him_ , and Crowley has never felt Aziraphale want anything. He's never been able to give him something that's made him go incandescent with light.

He slithers his way closer to that tug, and he realises that it's nothing less than the manifestation of Aziraphale's desire to have Crowley near him, finally unrestrained and offered without threat of judgment. Crowley can't do anything but let everything he is - the writhing tangle of impossible spirals, scorched edges and orbiting shards that are all that remains of what he originally was, and all that he's become since - fall into him.

_'Tell me if I -'_

_'No, angel, no - never.'_

_'I don't want to hurt you -'_

_'You won't.'_

_'The sound of you -'_

_' - we should -_

_'Yes - I don't know how -_

_'We'll try together.'_

_'You feel like -'_

_'I remember -'_

_'Angel -'_

_'Demon -'_

On another plane of existence they spill against each other, and the entire garden is filled with light.

They're still sitting on the same picnic blanket, still tipped into each other's space. One of Crowley's hands is spread on the ground and the other is lifted, fingers pressed - no threaded gently through the angel's now. The world around them is frozen, the grass beneath them fighting the combined urges to grow energetically or blacken and die. Held in a moment of perfect perilous mortality.

Aziraphale is vast but Crowley is still an impossible amount of matter and energy to contain, what doesn't fit between the wings, the streams of bright holy light, and the shifting flame-edged circles, Crowley wraps around him, so eager to be part of him, winding tighter and deeper. He presses carefully where the angel's essence is soft and thin, the vulnerable, sensitive stretches of his form. Aziraphale doesn't protect himself, he lets Crowley touch, lets him slip parts of himself inside, lets him twist and coil and curl himself where no one has been allowed before, and the whole of Aziraphale shimmers and shudders and stings with perfect bliss.

There are small scorched holes in the picnic blanket, as if a cigarette had been dropped here and there. A sunflower behind the angel has grown four feet, and a bee that had been caught when time slowed finds itself gently removed by a thread of angelic power when the temperature of the air between them rises enough that stray motes of dust and pollen burn away to nothing.

They shudder and slide against each other, eagerly, joyously, starting to find the places where they ring the same, where friction and pressure and heat let them slowly melt - fuse, tangle, join - allowing something of a merging, or a mingling, an enveloping, an enfolding. Parts of Aziraphale become Crowley's too, parts of Crowley belong to Aziraphale. It's a vulnerability Crowley had never imagined himself wanting, but they have given everything of themselves before, without hesitation, without doubt. Giving himself to Aziraphale is the easiest thing he's ever done.

On their red and white blanket in the garden, surrounded by the smell of summer and a stretch of grass that is both dead and alive at the same time, Aziraphale makes the softest noise, though the form that it comes out of is something of a mystery. The wine sours and then sweetens, darkens to the colour of wood and then swirls bright and clear. Pansies spring up around the edges of the blanket and sharp blackberry vines curl around them. The apple tree by the greenhouse sheds heavy, ripe apples when yesterday it had barely finished blossoming.

They are a swirl of chaos, a majesty of form, black-red and white-gold, spun through each other like the finest silk, but deep and strong enough that nothing could tear them asunder. They are anathema and unnameable and they are holy and exalted. They are opposites and they are the same. They are loved, they are both loved, all the way through - even cut down to the finest atom, every electron, every spark of the smallest piece of matter. They are _loved_.

The afternoon drags on around them, the sun moving slowly but inevitably across the sky.

Crowley wants -

Aziraphale wants -

They didn't expect to find so much.

There is so much.

It's overwhelming. They can't stay like this, they need to be separate to be loved this much.

-

The real world is colder than Crowley remembers.

"Oh," Aziraphale says, the word soft and shaking, his eyes are bright with moisture and he looks as devastated as Crowley feels at suddenly being a singular being again. There had been no way to prepare for that. They'd never been told, no one had ever explained.

"Aziraphale." Crowley's voice comes out dry and cracked. He's not sure what he wants to say, or whether he just wanted to hear the angel's name out loud.

"I didn't know it would be like that," Aziraphale says quietly.

Their hands are still joined, pressed to the picnic blanket now, fingers curled hard and tight around each other. Crowley finds that strangely indecent all of a sudden. It would be so easy to slip inside the angel again, or let the angel slip inside him. He wonders if merging that way would be different. Urging the angel inside his cold core, letting the vast shape of Aziraphale pour heat into him until Crowley splintered under his light. Oh, but he wants it more than anything.

"Crowley?" Aziraphale says.

He looks up, but there's no question to be had, just a soft expression of almost wonder, something proud and grateful and adoring. He thinks maybe Aziraphale just wanted to say his name as well.

They shift in towards each other by unspoken agreement, dry mouths pressing together in the softest test of physical affection. It's the closest their corporations have ever been, the most they've touched. It's warm, it's pleasant, Crowley can taste Aziraphale, he can feel the flutter of his eyelashes and the softness of his face against his own.

It's nice.

Aziraphale doesn't draw away after. He simply turns and very gently lets his body relax into Crowley's chest. Crowley curls an arm around him, something he wouldn't have dared this morning, but the angel sighs and retrieves both glasses of wine with a gesture, hands one over his shoulder.

Crowley takes it. "Thought cigarettes were the done thing after that," he murmurs, against the curling softness of the angel's hair.

Aziraphale laughs.


End file.
